Figuring It Out
by callafallon
Summary: Belle and Rumplestiltskin have trouble going from true love to lovers. RumBelle smut.


It had been fifteen days since she had walked back into his life. Fifteen days of long conversations, and tentative kisses, and confessions of undying love. But there hadn't been anything more than that. Anytime their kisses became to passionate he would back away. "You need time, dearest," he would say. He no longer called her dearie, his generic nickname for almost anyone he dealt with, but she was his one and only dearest.

"I've waited long enough," Belle would say, trying her best to look seductive.

"Then what is a little longer?" He would hold her, cuddle her, but he wouldn't make love to her. While Belle slept in his bed, Rumpelstiltskin was across the hall in the guest room.

He had dozens of perfectly logical reasons for not taking the next step, to go from true love to lovers. Belle needed time to learn the new world. They needed time to learn each others needs as equals, and not as master and servant. There was a war looming, and he needed to be focused on that. They should wait to get married, and that meant waiting until Regina was gone or at least until the restraining order was lifted and he could ask her father for permission to wed her. His actions towards her father alone, the Saint Valentine's Day attempted massacre, should have resulted in his permanent stay in the guest room. But Belle was forgiving and kind. She told him that he was working with incomplete information, and that if her father had been responsible for her death his actions would have been appropriate.

Belle was perfect. And that was the real problem standing between them and the bedroom.

Because even though she was a maiden and he was a creature of darkness who had lived over centuries, he was the one who was terrified of what would happen their first time together. Belle may have been an innocent, but that was better than having noting but bad experiences.

Princes and Knights and boys of merchants were trained in the ways of the bedroom by courtesans and whores. Their father's would pay for these lessons starting early, when the lads were barely out of short pants, and they would get plenty of practice with serving girls and widows before they would bed their wives. Rumpelstiltskin had only been a poor orphan child, his parents killed in the plagues, who had been fortunate enough to be chosen to apprentice with the local spinner. There'd been no man-to-man talk about what happened in the marriage bed. Not even a trip to the farmlands to show how the sheep managed things.

Saryelle was not a virgin when Rumpelstiltskin wed her. Which was just as well since Bae would have never been born if she hadn't been able to direct him as to how the mechanics of mating even worked. She'd laughed at him that first night, but over time her mocking became more bitter and cruel. It was a relief when she fell pregnant because it meant that he no longer had to try to perform the humiliating weekly ritual. But then the Ogres came. Then the world changed.

There had been other women through the lifetimes. He'd been seduced by that witch, Cora, who had acted as though his every touch pleased her even as her eyes were always cold and plotting. And there had been a few women who had offered their bodies as payment for his deals. But those were all about his pleasure. He'd never had to concern himself with their happiness. Which was just as well because they never were happy.

Belle deserved more than whatever he could offer her. When she looked at him it was with pure love and devotion. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before. The thought of somehow disappointing her, of no longer seeing that look on her face, was too great. He would just keep delaying things. In the meantime he had bought every book on the topic of pleasing women and had tried to use the computer to do additional research. Although the videos online were not terrible instructional in nature, and all seemed to involve delivery men.

It was nearly midnight when Rumpelstiltskin got home, which wouldn't have been unusual in the old days when he often needed to utilize his contacts in the parts of Storybrooke that didn't start to come alive until the sun went down, but now that he had someone waiting at home he liked to be there as much as possible.

Belle had left the porch light on for him, along with a light in the kitchen where beef stew was prepared and warming in a crock pot. He ate quickly out of a bowl over the sink, not taking time to sit down or look through the mail. She'd be asleep by now, but he still wanted to get upstairs to kiss her goodnight and just remind himself how lucky he was.

After checking to make sure the doors were locked, and that the runes powering the protection spell were still working, Rumpelstiltskin walked upstairs, taking his coat off and starting to loosen his tie along the way. He opened the door to the master bedroom and looked in the dark, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust, until he saw the Belle was missing. The bed was mussed, as if someone had been in it earlier, but the comforter had been thrown to the ground and the windows left open.

"No," he grumbled, backing up into the hallway, "No. No. No." He just kept repeating the word, louder and louder, as he imagined Belle tapped in some hidden basement again. He'd just found her and now she was taken away again. He felt his chest tighten, and his mind kept flashing terrible images of all the fates that could have befallen her. Belle, her body broken and dead. Alive but trapped. Hurt, crying, screaming, his name.

"Rumpelstiltskin," she said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Belle? You...you're safe."

He had to touch her, to make sure she was real, his hands gripping her arms. She wore a thin satin nightgown with lace trim along the front and no sleeves keeping him from feeling her smooth cool skin.

"Are you alright?" she asked, placing her small palm against his cheek.

"You weren't in your bed. I thought..."

Her blue eyes filled with guilt. "I'm so sorry. I didn't even think...I couldn't sleep. I went to your room to wait for you. But I guess I was more tired than I thought."

She tilted her head up, offering her lips in a soft kiss that reassured him that she was safe. It was gentle and reassuring, but he found himself being inflamed by it instead of comforted. It would be so easy to just push her against the hallway wall and grind himself against her until he had ruined his favorite pair of pants. Belle was like absinth. Just a small taste of her could cause him to lose all sense and control.

He puled away reluctantly, trying to keep her from embracing him and feeling proof of how little self-control he had. "Would you prefer sleeping in the guest room?"

A shy smile crossed her face. "Yes. Very much."

"Well, then you may have it. We'll move your things over in the morning." He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and, with one hand pressed firmly against her lower back, pointed her towards the guest room. "Goodnight love."

It wasn't that he didn't want to spend more time in the hallway kissing her. He could happily spend the rest of his life exploring every inch of her mouth. There were creatures in the old worlds, sirens and succubi who could bewitch a man to the point that they would starve to death rather than be parted from the monsters in the guise of maidens. He'd always thought that only the stupidest of men would be so swayed by a pretty face, but Belle's magic over him was more powerful than any of the ancient monsters.

When he heard the door across the hall close he quickly unzipped his pants and pulled out the erection that he'd been nursing since he saw Belle in that flimsy excuse for a nightgown. He sat down hard on the bed, his eyes closed as he remembered how the gown had shown the slight swell of her breast, the curve of her hips. He imagined how it would feel to trace the lace accents along the front of the fabric, Belle's skin warm underneath.

Other men might have imagined ripping the gown off the woman and grabbing at the heaving bosom underneath. But he couldn't even allow his mind to go to that. Naked Belle would be to close to a nightmare. Like one of those punishments from the gods of Olympus meant to give the subject eternal torture, to have Belle nude before him but to know that he couldn't satisfy her would drive him mad.

No, he kept his mind on her clothed and looking up at him with love and devotion. He began pumping his fist along his cock, grasping in tightly. "Belle," he said, imagining her before him, "You look like an angel in satin and lace."

"And I thought you didn't even notice," a saucy voice said from the doorway. There she was, catching him getting himself off like some type of naughty child. His erection flagged, his hands shot up in the air as if she was pointing a gun at him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

She shook her head, long brown hair falling behind her shoulders and exposing more of her lovely breasts. Fearlessly she crossed until she was kneeling before him. Rumpelstiltskin would have thought it a fantasy, but even in his dreams Belle was never this bold or brave. His imagination was limited by the coward creating it.

"Why did you stop?"

He didn't know what to say. "Shouldn't you be angry that I was doing it to being with?" The only thing that upset his wife more than having to deal with his attention was when he tried to sate them by his own hand.

She took his hands in her own, brushing her lips against the knuckles on each. "Rumpelstiltskin, all this time we've spent so close to each other but unable to be together...I'd be disappointed to find that you weren't fantasizing about me." She released his hands and then leaned forward, so that her head rested on his good knee. "You were thinking about me, weren't you?"

"Always."

"Good." She pressed a kiss against his knee. "It's only fair since I think about you whenever I touch myself."

His brain could spend the rest of his life diagramming the various levels of meaning in that sentence. She touched herself. She thought about him. She thought about him while touching herself. But even as his brain continued to stumble around what she meant, his body was already responding to what she had said. Belle was transfixed by the sight of his cock growing hard.

"Is that for me?" she asked, her eyes wide and voice so innocent that it only served to make the entire affair more arousingly filthy.

"You do this to me, you always have."

"Always?"

"Part of the reason I spent so much time at that damn spinning wheel was because I couldn't stand up." Her hands were at his waist, undoing his belt, but he moved quicker, divesting himself of the rest of his clothing. Belle began to slide the straps of her gown town her arms but he stilled her hands.

"Keep it on." Seeing her would be too much, he would have to touch and taste and take her. "Lie down on the bed, and show me what you do."

Belle looked confused for a moment before she started blushing. "Only if you let me watch you too."

He nodded his assent to the deal. Belle was at the head of the bed, sprawled out on the pillows and he stood up so that he could see all of her at once. His hand went back to stroking his cock, urged on by how Belle's blue eyes followed his hand back and forth. She never looked away, didn't even blink, as she began to fondle her breasts through the fabric.

"Tell me Belle," he whispered, "Did you do this back then? Did you lay in my castle and touch yourself. "

"Yes," she said immediately. "My nursemaids always were lecturing on the sin of self-pleasure. My body was not mine, they would say, but the property of my future husband. To touch it would be to trespass on his property. But once I was with you I realized there would be no husband. No property to ruin."

Her hand stilled, nipples hard and firm through the thin material of her nightgown. "Rumpelstiltskin..you will be my husband now, won't you? If you want me to stop..."

He was on top of her in an instant, quelling her concerns and worry with a sloppy kiss to her mouth, down her neck and up again. The only thing separating their bodies was the thin material of Belle's gown, and it couldn't hide the heat of her skin as the couple continued to kiss and touch. It was too much for him but also not enough, and instinctively he was grinding his erection against her hip.

Curiosity got the best of Belle, and she snaked her hand down to feel him, hard and hot. He stilled, trying to allow her to explore and touch him at her own pace.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, not making eye contact with him. "When it changes size... I would think that it would hurt."

"No pain, dearest, only pleasure." Her touches were so soft, so tentative, that he was going mad. "Now, I thought the agreement was that I would get to watch you also."

Belle pulled her hand away from his body and used it to hide her face. He kissed the hand, and the bits of her cheeks and neck that he could get to around it. "Why do you hide from me, Belle? Come now, tell me what the problem is and I will fix it. Even us monsters like to slay dragons for our lady fair."

"You're not a monster," she said, swatting him. "And I'm afraid you're going to be mad at me...I can't...not with you here. I thought I could. I want to be able to, but...it isn't proper of right for a lady to do those things."

He kissed her into silence. They were quite a pair, the purported beauty and the beast. He was too ashamed of his prowess to bed her and she too beholden to the lessons taught by nursemaids guarding her virginity to let him watch her. In their mating dance neither party was prepared to lead, and as much as he wanted to be the one to do so, he was unprepared. They would just have to find a way to muddle through.

"Come, sit up," he said, pulling her to her knees. He slung his legs over the side of the bed so she was kneeling behind his seated form. He gave a kiss to her right hand before moving to his cock, wrapping his own hand around hers. He guided her hand, closing his eyes at the sensation as her small fingers clutched him. "That's a good girl. Like that."

It was easier like this, not facing one another. Belle kissed his neck and worked her way up to her ear. "What were you thinking about, when I walked in?" she whispered. "I know you said me, but what about me?"

"That gown. How it would feel, the satin of it and your body underneath. Gods, you are beautiful. So beautiful."

Her lips were still at his ear, playing with the lobe as he spoke. "When I bought this I imagined how nice it would feel against my skin, and against yours. I didn't go into the other room because I didn't like this one. I was planning...well, I was planning on seducing you."

He clenched his fist harder around her hand, and increased the speed of their strokes. "Yes. Tell me. Please."

"Not much to tell. I clearly didn't have much of a plan. I just couldn't spend another night alone with you so close. I wake up every night in a cold sweat and my...body...throbbing. I know it's wrong, but I have to take my hand and touch myself to sooth the ache. It doesn't last. By morning the craving is there again, and when I come downstairs and see you it grows even more powerful."

"Yes, keep talking Belle. Tell me. Tell me more."

He felt her breath along his neck as she sighed. "The first time I did it was the night that you caught me in your arms. I could still feel your hands around me, holding me, and it was overwhelming. I felt I was going mad. Just looking at you made me weak. I was in the bath and even just feeling the water down there was making me tremble...and so I..."

He didn't need to see her to know she was blushing. He didn't have the strength to push her further, too caught up in the feeling of Belle's hand on him and thinking of her bathing in the dark castle while pleasuring herself. He let go of her hand, she was keeping up the pace without him, and reached back so that he could touch Belle's long hair, and drag her lips towards his for a kiss. His senses were overloaded with her taste, and smell, the feel of her hand on his cock and her glorious thick hair surrounding them. He fell apart, holding her mouth to his even as she gasped at the thick substance that covered her hand.

When he'd recovered and they cleaned up he wrapped her in his arms began to snuggle, kissing the back of her neck over and over again. Belle laughed at his attention. "Does this mean that I can stay with you tonight?"

"Couldn't get away if you tried."

"Good," Belle said, taking one of his hands that were resting at her abdomen and moving it higher. Guiding it with her own, she began to fondle her breast with his hand. "Because I think I could use your help with something."

He couldn't help but smile. He may be a coward and a fool, a beast and a bastard, but he had her. They'd figure out their way together


End file.
